


Home is family

by imsfire



Series: Rogue One Anniversary prompts [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cassian is not good with feelings, Crush, Day two prompt: Home, Family, Feels, Found Family, Home, K2 isn't here because he doesn't eat in the mess, Recovery, Rogue One Anniversary Week, but he made it too i'm just not sure how!, fluff & feels & a little bit of angst, mention of scars and injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 11:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12983409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Cassian realises that the "Welcome home" he gave Jyn applies to him as well.





	Home is family

He’s up before the end of the recommended period of bed-rest; asking, and then demanding and finally begging for, a pair of crutches and the all-clear to go.  It’s shameful, to make such a nuisance of himself; he’s never acted this way before.  But he has to be moving.  While he lay on the operating table or hung in a drugged stupor, submerged in bacta, the world has been almost lost, and the rebellion too.  Everything has happened, and he was sleeping.

The helplessness is unbearable. 

He has to move, get out, do something, somehow, he cannot stand to be kept safe here in the med-bay while those he’s meant to protect, the only family he’s had in 20 years, are working and suffering outside. 

Just now, the base is safe, but everyone knows the reprieve can only be temporary, and an evacuation is getting underway.  No-one knows how long they really have, only that it’s certain the enemy will be gathering forces and resources to counter-attack.  Command has been pulled back to a new location.  Services of every kind are being closed down, facilities taken out and moved off-planet onto the circling Mon Cala ships.  On every side buildings have already been stripped of equipment.  The old temples will be left to fade into the greenery once again.  In a matter of a few seasons no-one will be able to tell that Massassi was once home to thousands.

One crippled, complaining Intelligence officer is nobody’s priority once he’s discharged himself.  And that is as it should be.  No-one should have to think about Cassian Andor.

He stumps along on crutches and deeply shaking legs into the main mess hall in Pyramid Three, the only one still operating as numbers on the base decrease.  Stops in the doorway, looking around; at the wide open space, the mighty pillars and the carved and cracked ceiling, the oblique light, the rows of tables and benches, the familiar heads of a dozen sentient species bowed over their food or talking animatedly. 

How many years has he come quietly in, to this noise, and sat down to eat with them?  How many years of being alone in this bustling crowd? 

It always smells the same in here; fresh bread, mycoprotein, fried onions.  It’s a place where people smile, no matter how bad things are, no matter how shaken their sense of purpose; because they’ve made it through another day and so have their messmates, and there’s nutrition in front of them, and a fresher and a bed waiting.

It had never occurred to him that he would ever again feel the smallest pull at the thought of leaving somewhere behind.  As near as anywhere has been in twenty years, it’s home. 

Home isn’t a place, home is a concept.  The rebellion, the shared goal, the community of free minds and hearts.  _The hope I found here.  That I still find here.  The family I found_ …

This home, this family; himself on a tangent to all of them; the only belonging he’s known, for so long…

He can’t stand here indefinitely, just swaying in the doorway.  He’s scanning over the crowds, not letting himself admit that he’s searching for anyone in particular.  Then he finds them.

Five dark heads, sitting together; five humans alone at a table near the disposal hatches.  He’d know them anywhere, though he’s only known one of them for more than a handful of days.  Tonc is animated, as usual, laughing and talking while Bodhi sits silent beside him, grinning shyly up at the taller man; and there’s Baze, built like a small shuttlecraft, and Chirrut neat and sleek as a seal, both of them listening with half-smiles.  Jyn sits looking at her food.  Her downturned face is thoughtful, almost expressionless, and he notices she doesn’t seem to have eaten much.  He wants to admonish her for it, and he wants to find her something better; because she is too thin, because he must do something for her, because she deserves the best.

She deserves better, certainly.  They all do, they’ve all borne dreadful losses and suffered so much; but Jyn most of all, he thinks.  Jyn as much, no, more, even than him. 

He isn’t quite sure yet what to do with this inexplicable preference.  Favouritism, attachment, he doesn’t even know what to call it.  Crush.  _Be honest, for once, Andor, you know what this is, you child._   **Crush.**  

No.  It’s still a lie, to name this emotion that; _crush_ implies **_mere_** _crush_ and that is confusingly, alarmingly, exhilaratingly false.  He cannot dismiss this as a behaviour it’s safe to deride and set aside in that way.  It’s so much more than just an attraction, it’s deeper and more intense, and a lot harder to name.  Crush-comradeship-friendship-recognition-respect-bond-love.  Love.  Joy.  _Yes, joy._ _I do not understand this and I do not know how to name it, but it brings me so much joy and I have not known that in so long, and I am glad I met you._

Joy.  Love.  Family.  Home.  He’s never had such things; never allowed himself to.  But the mirror of his life, in her, has hurt and then illumined him; and when she reached out to him on that beach he reached back, without hesitation, and when they touched he knew he wanted to live.

Cassian has barely started to limp forward through the crowded mess hall when he sees Chirrut’s head come up.  Surely he can’t be within earshot already, not even with the monk’s famously sharp hearing.  The click of his crutches, the stumbling shuffle of his movements, are barely audible even to him, above the buzz of conversation and the rattle of cutlery, and the distant roar of a shuttlecraft powering up out on the runway. 

But Chirrut turns in his seat and looks right through him, as usual, and smiles beatifically.  He says something to the others, and the chatting, the eating, the sitting-and-thinking all stop.  All five faces look round as he continues to peg his way carefully towards them.  He’s getting closer, getting there, he can do it.  He isn’t helpless, no matter how much the medic may have frowned at his insistence on being discharged. 

It will be good to sit down again, though.

Up ahead, one by one, all five faces smile. 

Not one face is quite as he remembers it.  So many scars; from shrapnel, burns, surgery...  Every one of them must have been in the med-bay with him.  While he was still out cold, floating like a vegetable to be washed for the kitchen.

His people, his friends.  The survivors of his team, that was put together out of love and honour, to fight for the truth behind the expediency.  His family.  All of them gathered round Jyn, as they should be; a family is always meant to stand together. 

Every time he sees them, every time he finds her, no matter when, no matter where they are, that is where he’ll go.  His home, his family; his trust, his love.

He sets off down the aisle between tables, hobbling towards them.  Jyn’s scarred face, uncertain, faintly smiling, lighting his path.  It’s a long way, and it still hurts to move, but he’s going home.

 


End file.
